


Unravel unwind

by lizzieraindrops



Category: The Far Meridian (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Wings, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Best Friends, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Femslash, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, Mutual Pining, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Pining, Pre-Canon, Pre-Femslash, Stargazing, Wing Grooming, Wingfic, Wings, it's really gay, they're still in high school
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-13 05:51:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20169202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzieraindrops/pseuds/lizzieraindrops
Summary: I decided that angsty wingfic for The Far Meridian was a necessity.Just a memory of a soft evening atop a lighthouse, filled with unspoken words and un-nameable longing. Girls preening the wings of close friends is totally normal - unless you're pining sapphics suffering internalized homophobia. A continuation of the sunset scene inEp. 1.10 Whitecaps. I promise it does end soft.





	Unravel unwind

**Author's Note:**

> Peri has the wings of a [ hermit thrush](https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Hermit_Thrush/lifehistory) – an elusive migratory songbird that travels at night, rarely visits feeders, and is widely regarded as having [one of the most beautiful, ethereal songs](https://musicofnature.com/feature/hermit-thrush/).  
Ruth has the wings of a [northern spotted owl](https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Spotted_Owl/overview) – a nocturnal bird with little white spots like stars on dark brown wings, and [big brown eyes](https://www.allaboutbirds.org/evidence-of-absence-northern-spotted-owls-are-still-vanishing-from-the-northwest/).
> 
> Title from the song of the same name by The Spring Standards, also featured on [this Peri/Ruth playlist](https://lizzieraindrops.tumblr.com/post/186573345209/until-i-see-you-again-a-far-meridian-mix-for-peri).
> 
> _Say it  
Say the words I see behind your eyes  
If it’s not hard to say, then it’s a lie_

With the brilliant colors of the sunset, the brine seasoning the seaside air, and the sound of the sweetest voice in the world singing where only she can hear, this might be Peri’s idea of bliss. The soft vibrations of unexpected music twines about the two of them in the air atop the lighthouse, much like the winding breeze that breathes through Peri’s feathers. The wind tugs lightly at them like an invitation to sky. That pull revives the muscle memory of flight going back for generations, running all the way down the vanes to stir their roots. But the song reaches even deeper into her, somewhere in the region where her wings themselves are rooted.

It’s a perfect moment, even if something about it aches indescribably. But it’s alright; it’s a familiar nameless ache, one that swells or softens but never completely fades. Maybe it’s more noticeable right now because Peri doesn’t know when she’ll get another moment like this. So, she tries to make the most of it. She keeps her eyes on the sky and drinks in the air and the light and the sound, trying to sink into the sweetness and save the bitterness for later. It works until it doesn’t.

“You could always… go,” Ruth says, but the way her voice trails tells Peri she already knows her answer. “Next semester. It’d be way easier if we could cheer each other on.”

Peri folds her wings in a little tighter, so the wind’s fingers slide off of them. She doesn’t look at Ruth. “I’ve got my online courses…”

“You know that’s not the same.”

Peri leans forward into the railing of the balcony around the light room as she sighs. She’d hoped Ruth wouldn’t make her say it. “Trust me, if I were a turtle with my home on my back… I’d be there in half a heartbeat.”

“C’mon,” Ruth says, stirring the air with a playful stroke of her forewings. The tips of her soft primaries barely brush Peri’s arm. “In the grand cosmic scheme of things, the whole Earth _is_ your home, zooming through space at sixty-seven thousand miles per hour!”

“Sounds more like a racecar than a home!” Peri protests, but she feels a smile seeking its way to her lips.

“You are – impossible!” Ruth exclaims.

Laughter escapes both of them then. It makes the brief tension recede like one wave folding under the next, returning them to bittersweet contemplation of the kaleidoscope sky.

Peri gives a little shrug of her wings and settles them to lay more comfortably against her back. A few of the tertial feathers at the base catch on the cotton of her shirt. She lifts her left wing a little and reaches her right arm around to smooth them back into place. Once it’s fixed and re-folded, she shifts to carefully lean her elbow against Ruth’s on the railing. She does it oh so slowly, so casually that Ruth can move away if she wishes, and Peri will have done nothing but adjusted the way her weight rests against the rail. Her arms practically ache with affected ease, ready to pull back, _oh sorry, didn’t mean to bump you_, if Ruth pulls away.

Ruth doesn’t pull away. The wind softens into something that barely dances over Peri’s skin. In the resulting quiet, she can hear Ruth breathing. Peri listens.

“I’m really gonna miss you,” Ruth says in a soft voice.

Peri watches the golds and oranges of the sunset deepen toward pink. The clouds holding that brilliant light slide along the horizon like sails before swifter, higher winds than the ones that reach the lighthouse. Words fill her throat, but she doesn’t know what any of them are, much less how to say them. “Yeah,” she finally says. “Me, too.”

The two of them stand together in silence. Ruth heaves a slow sigh. That ineffable ache still lingers, as it always does for Peri: quietly, and constantly. But usually, it’s not this _much_. Right now, Peri can physically feel it like a sore muscle, somewhere deep in her chest in the same place where the music goes. On the surface far above it, the skin of her wing twitches in irritation. Some of the smaller covert feathers above the corrected tertials still feel askew. She cants the wing upward again, reaching. Her fingers stretch toward the mosquito-bite itch, but it’s right on the back of her wing where it’s hardest to reach.

Peri lets out a frustrated sound. She briskly fluffs her feathers up and then down again, hoping it will sort out the stuck ones without her having to practically stretch her shoulder out of socket. It doesn’t. This probably wouldn’t be as difficult if she didn’t carry so much tension in her arm- and wing-shoulders. The stiffness of it constricts her natural range of movement just a little, just enough to keep those furthest preening spots out of reach and to leave her neck and upper back perpetually tight and sore. Then again, a whole lot of things in her life probably wouldn’t be as difficult without the anxiety causing that tension in the first place.

Peri braces her hands on the rail. She stretches her rounded wings directly backward to brush their tips against the glass walls of the light room, then folds them down again, to no avail. She huffs in annoyance.

“Hey, you okay?” Ruth asks, giving her a sideways look with one eyebrow raised.

“Yeah, just – nghh.” Peri shrugs her wings again, then tucks them down and holds resolutely still. She’s not going to break the spell of this perfect sunset, not going to walk away from this one of the precious few moments she has left just to go downstairs for a back scratcher. “I’ve just got a feather out of sorts right in the back. It’s fine though.”

“Oh.”

Peri tries to keep her attention on the pink-and-gold clouds, and not on the itch at her back or the light press of the arm leaning against hers. It doesn’t work very well, because she finds some of those words in her throat taking shape and slipping half a question past her teeth before she knows what they are.

“Could you – ?”

At the same time, Ruth blurts, “Do you want me to – ?”

They both break off to stare right at each other. Ruth raises her wings just slightly in a hesitant gesture. Peri quickly looks away again.

“Um,” Peri says, hoping the warm glow of the sunset hides her blush. She pulls her wings in scrunched close to her shoulders in embarrassment. She feels the offending feathers stick up along with several dozen neighbors, crinkled up along the folds of skin.

“Sorry, I – uh,” Ruth says. “I meant – I can fix it, if you want. Or not! It’s totally cool, if that’s weird –”

“No! No, it’s not weird!” Peri says hurriedly. It wouldn’t be. It’s Ruth.

But if it were, that’s _why_ it would be: because it’s Ruth.

Peri had Ace or her mom or dad help her with preening often enough, especially in those hard-to-reach spots. It was a thing lots of people did with close friends and family. Ruth practically _was_ family – she ate dinner at the lighthouse half the time, anyway. It wouldn’t be unusual for Ruth to preen her. Peri had seen plenty of girls at school casually combing through each other’s feathers at the end of lunch hour. That was always a little golden window of free time that the two of them spent together, where nothing consequential ever really happened. Now, though, it occurs to Peri that those casual interstices were home to a disproportionate number of oddly precious memories. They rise up clamoring inside her, as if desperate to not become part of a closed chapter.

There was the time they found a crying thrush trapped in an unused locker down by Mr. Santos’ office, and Peri opened it and got a face full of feathers so much like her own. The two of them chased it down the hallway toward the door Ruth held open for it, and the bird flew out into the sky with a call of joy that they both echoed. Then, there was Heidi’s birthday sophomore year when her grandmother sent her to school with a ton of donuts, except half of them got repurposed for a miniature food fight. Somehow, it was exhilarating instead of terrifying. Peri landed a surprisingly accurate powdered donut on Ruth’s head in a puff of white sugar that clung to her hair all day. She quickly experienced retribution in the form of Ruth seizing her and dusting her all over with a cinnamon twist while laughing and leaving sugary handprints all down her sleeves. And then, there was that time the two of them wandered the perimeter of the soccer field at the edge of school and sat together in the grass awhile, chatting and staring at the trees beyond, and nothing interesting happened at all. They were simply together. Something in the stillness of that moment echoed the bliss of this quiet, sunset-glazed evening that she was living today.

Except for the current awkwardness, today _had_ been blissful - besides the unnamed ache, of course, but that was always there. But perhaps Peri and her escaped words shouldn’t have brought up the idea of preening. For some reason, it was something that had never been a part of any of those remembered moments. It just wasn’t something the two of them did. Peri had never questioned it, never wanted to cross an unacknowledged line. Sure, she had wondered in idle moments what it might feel like to run a hand through the softness of Ruth’s dark velvet-edged owl-feathers, to trace the little white spots that speckled them like stars across a night sky. But someone’s wings were so personal, so strong and yet so vulnerable, that she would never presume to ask, not even her best friend. Especially her best friend.

But now, the wings concerned aren’t Ruth’s, but her own. Although she never even considered the possibility before, she knows she would trust Ruth with anything and everything, including this. Including her. And Ruth herself had offered. Minutes ago, the concept of Ruth’s hands on her wings hadn’t existed. But suddenly, intensely, Peri _wants_. She wants this before Ruth takes the option far away with her when she leaves. The deep ache inside her twists sharply in a strange way she doesn’t know how to understand.

Ruth is still staring at her, twisting her hands together. Peri flushes again, but just says, in a voice that catches on that ache and breaks into a whisper: “Would you?”

Ruth’s face blooms with hope. Being the reason for that expression makes Peri feel like the sun itself. Ruth begins to reach toward Peri’s wing, but checks herself one more time, retracting her hands as if from a fire too warm, too close.

“You’re sure it’s not weird?” Ruth says, brows crinkling in uncertainty.

“It’s not weird,” Peri says again. Thankfully, her voice doesn’t break this time. “Well, I mean, _you’re_ weird, so by default everything involving you is weird, but other than that –”

“Hey!” Ruth puts one hand on her hip. “Rude! You’re one to talk.”

For the second time that evening, they both dissolve into giggles. The beam from the lighthouse’s light swings over them, illuminating their faces with a glimpse of brilliance.

“Okay but no, really,” Peri says after she’s caught her breath. “That spot’s _really_ really bugging me, can you get it?”

“Yeah yeah! Come here,” Ruth says. As naturally as if they’ve done this a thousand times, she reaches out toward her once again and twirls a finger in the air to ask Peri to turn around.

Peri turns and stretches out her left wing, resting her opposite hand on the glass walls of the light room. “It’s right down at the base there, do you see it?”

“Oh yeah, hon, you’re all kinds of ruffled up here.”

For a moment, Peri doesn’t feel anything but the breeze. But just as she’s worrying that Ruth has decided this is too weird after all, careful fingers sink into the mat of soft brown coverts at her shoulder. Very gently at first, and then with deliberate firmness, she starts combing them back into place.

“Yeah, the one that’s really the problem is just belo– ahh!” Peri shivers as Ruth untangles the feather’s barbs from its neighbors and flattens it between her fingers to zip them back into alignment. Then she rubs the pad of her thumb against the feather’s base where it meets the skin, erasing the twinge of irritation with comforting pressure. Peri’s wing involuntarily sags to the ground in relief, yet again crinkling up all the feathers where her wing meets her back into disarray.

Ruth just laughs. “Starshine, you’re gonna undo all my work if you do that. Here, why don’t you sit down.”

“Oh - okay.”

Peri settles herself cross-legged at the end of the balcony. She rests her arms on the lower rail and fully stretches out both wings, resting them on the ground at a more relaxed angle. Ruth sits down behind her, and with a deep breath sets to fixing her feathers again.

If this evening was blissful before, now it’s approaching something more like wonder. It’s hard to believe it’s real. Sitting here watching the bright clouds fade while Ruth cards deft fingers through her feathers, making the skin underneath tingle with pleasure... it’s a whole new kind of exquisite. Maybe the only thing that could make it better would be if Ruth started singing again – and sure enough, Ruth starts humming to herself as she works. Peri’s left wing goes slack, followed by her right as Ruth works her way through the tiny scapulars on her back toward the opposite limb. The corded tightness of those great flight muscles slowly begins to untie itself, chased away by strokes of careful pressure and gentle scratches.

After she finishes the covert feathers at the elbow bend of her wing, Ruth goes quiet and pauses. Peri hums a softest protest in her throat. At the sound, Ruth lays a silent question on the expanse of her ungroomed secondary coverts with a gently placed palm. Peri can’t help but press an answer into her touch.

Ruth chuckles and resumes, soothing sensitive skin and smoothing down all those little rounded feathers. She even massages the underlying wing, wrapping her hands right around the marginal coverts and squeezing her fingers deep into the muscle. How did she get so good at this? If Peri had known earlier....

Ruth continues to hum as she goes, softly enough that she might be just singing to herself. But when she sings Clementine again, the notes trace their way right into Peri’s core, lancing that eternal ache with unbearable sweetness.

This might be both the happiest and saddest Peri has ever felt.

Once Ruth finishes grooming the coverts, front and back, she starts running her fingers along each great flight feather. She hums another song Peri doesn't know, making sure all the feathers' little barbs knit together without gaps.

“Beautiful,” she murmurs in between the notes.

“Huh?” Peri glances at the plain brown wing in Ruth’s hands. “They’re just brown.”

“So are mine!”

Peri rolls her eyes. “Yeah, yours are dark and gorgeous and you’ve got all those little white spots that look like constellations. Mine are all the same and just kind of dusty-looking.”

“What! No they’re not. They’re such a warm color. They’ve got this gradient...” Ruth supports the back of one of Peri’s long primaries with one hand while reaching over the top of the wing to trace the raised rachis on the feather’s underside with her fingers. “They’re kind of pale golden at the base, and then they turn more sort of, I dunno. Like hot cocoa. And look! You’ve got this adorable little stripe of dark tips on your primary coverts. And your alula.” Ruth tweaks the three little ‘thumb’ feathers at the top of her wing.

“Oh.” Peri blinks. “I mean, I guess.”

“They’re right here! There’s no need to guess. You’re adorable, and that’s that.”

Peri rolls her eyes with an exasperated sigh and a smile.

Ruth goes back to fixing up her long remiges. Peri’s wings sink ever closer to the floor, limp with relaxed pleasure. Finally, after what could be either hours or mere minutes, Ruth runs her hands down the length of them and stops.

“There,” Ruth whispers into the evening air, so soft she can hardly hear it. “How’s that?”

In answer, Peri stretches both her arms and wings out to their fullest extent with languorous ease. On impulse, she falls back into Ruth’s chest with an enormous sigh, wings still splayed. The soft _whoof_ of air Ruth lets out makes her hair flutter by her ear.

“Good,” Peri says.

“Good.” Ruth’s voice is oddly high.

Ruth’s chest rises and falls against her back and wing-shoulders, and Peri finds that they’re breathing in rhythm. It’s lovely.

Ruth shifts her arms like she’s not sure what to do with them, with Peri practically in her lap. Apparently, she settles on stretching them out to lay along the margins of Peri’s prone wings. It increases the points of contact between them, and Peri certainly isn’t going to complain. They both hold still, simply breathing, Ruth’s breath brushing against her cheek.

She’s going to miss Ruth _so_ much. The reality of her leaving has been circling closer for days, weeks, maybe even years, but now the fact has finally come home to roost in Peri’s ribcage.

Peri’s body is far more relaxed than usual. But the softness draws an unbearably sharp contrast with this hurting in her chest – – her heart fucking _aches_.

A shudder of pain that has nothing to do with Peri’s muscles runs through her, making her breath stutter.

“Whoa – Peri, what’s wrong?”

Peri squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head sharply. _Don’t, please don’t, don’t ruin this_, she tells herself.

“_Peri_,” Ruth says more urgently. Her voice is soft, but it goes low and resonant, like she’s trying to throw it across a canyon. Her hands cup Peri’s wings, holding her as they curl inward with pain.

Peri opens her mouth, desperately trying to cough up all the unspoken things trapped in her throat, but she has no idea how to make them turn into words that she can say.

Water wells in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she says in a broken whisper, and turns her face into Ruth’s neck to hide them.

Ruth stiffens as she leans in, but just as quickly goes soft and curls around her. Her cheek rests against Peri’s head while her arms slide past the curtain of her feathers and wrap around her waist to hug her closer.

“Oh honey,” she breathes, “For what? You don’t need to be. It’s okay.”

Peri’s shuddering breaths shake them both a few times before subsiding under the comforting pressure of Ruth’s arms.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Ruth whispers into her hair. The evening breeze twists around them, throwing one of Ruth’s stray locks into Peri’s eyes.

Peri shakes her head again, softer this time. She can’t. She wants to. But when she tries to say any or all of the unknown things she desperately needs to, the only sound her throat wants to make is a cry just like that thrush when it was trapped in the locker.

“Did I do something?” Ruth’s voice goes thin with uncertainty. “Was this too much?” Her arms begin to loosen unforgivably.

“No!” She lays her own arms over Ruth’s to keep them from pulling away. Right now, they’re the only thing keeping the ache inside her from growing so large it consumes her. “You’re fine.” _You’re perfect. You’re wonderful. You’re everything. Please don’t go_, she doesn’t say. She has no right to be saying such excessive things. “Please, just... stay here awhile?”

Ruth tightens her hold around Peri again. “Of course. I’m here, starshine.”

_For now_, she thinks with a pang, but she turns away from the thought. No matter what happens next, nothing can change the fact that Ruth has soothed her wings and called them beautiful and held Peri close in her arms. That’s _real_ now, and nothing can ever take that away from her. That’s something she wouldn’t give up even to avoid all this hurt. She lays a hand over one of the darker ones splayed across her ribs, and Ruth tangles their fingers together. The gesture makes Peri melt back into her embrace. It acquires even more layers when Ruth brings her wings around parallel to Peri’s own to shelter her from the stiffening breeze.

Although being so close is what made her aching flare up so terribly into this storm of unutterable words and nameless longing, drawing even closer like this gently ushers Peri into something of a storm’s eye. Here, body to body and wing to wing, the aching releases its grip on her, and she finally goes completely soft. She knows it’s still there, rooted deep within her. But for perhaps the first time since it sprouted unnoticed in her heart an unknown number of years ago and began trellising itself all through her chest and shoulders, it doesn’t hurt. It just holds her, steadies her, the same way Ruth is holding her.

The breeze grows cooler and the surf grows fainter as the tide goes out. The pink clouds have long since taken a turn toward purple, and are now fading into dusky violet in an inky-blue evening sky.

Eventually, Ruth stirs without letting go of her. “Hey, Peri, look.” She points out west toward where the sun’s setting leaves a pale halo on the horizon. In between the smoky clouds, there’s a bright pinprick of light.

“It’s you,” Ruth says. “The evening star. Hesperos, the Greeks called it. And Phosphoros, the morning star – back then they didn’t know it was the same thing. It’s Venus, really. But I guess we’ve never really forgotten what it meant to us, in the beginning, when we started looking at the sky. And we’ve carried the story of it with us ever since.”

“Mmhmm.” Peri’s heard this story many times before. But she could spend all night listening to the way Ruth’s voice goes soft and full of awe when she talks about the stars.

They both gasp as a broad streak of blue-white brilliance arcs right past the gleaming planet and vanishes behind a trailing cloud.

“Oh, that’s a fireball!” Ruth exclaims, holding on to her tight. “I’ve never seen one that bright. Blue usually means high magnesium content – quick, make a wish, girl!” She gives Peri an extra squeeze.

“What, because it has high magnesium content?” Peri asks, baffled.

“No, dummy, because it’s a shooting star! Quick now.”

Peri looks out to the horizon where the ‘star’ fell, blinking at the afterimages of its descent. The only wish she can possibly make right now is the one that she doesn’t have words for. Her chest and throat go tight and sharp as she tries once more to force the yearning inside her to name itself, even if only in her mind. But it’s like trying to pick unripe fruit that clings tenaciously to the vine. It’s just not ready. Maybe she herself just isn’t ready.

Then again, maybe wishes don’t need to be trapped in words. That planet glinting on the horizon has meant enough to people to be given many words – names – of its own, but it’s still the same thing it always was. Perceptions must have shifted over time, and yet Hesperia’s own name is a lingering echo of what a light in the sky meant to humans who lived centuries ago. The nature of things matters, but so does the way people feel about them.

Peri stops fighting the thing inside her, and it immediately releases her into the softness of Ruth’s arms again. _Okay_. Squeezing her eyes shut, she holds the memory of that shooting star close to her heart. She pulls that spark of light into the soft eye of the storm with her, thinking deliberately: _this_. And then, because her human mind clings to the language it knows, gives it the only vague words that she has.

_I hope this works out_.

She heaves a great sigh as she sets the wish free and leans into Ruth even more.

“Starshine?” Ruth.

“Yeah?”

“You make a wish?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Don’t tell me.” Ruth pulls her in closer, until Peri’s nestled into her chest close enough to feel another heartbeat.

They’re quiet. The sky has finally darkened enough that the lighthouse’s swinging beam has become a solid thing in the dimness.

“Did you?” Peri asks.

“Did I what?”

“Make a wish.”

“Yeah.”

“Can we do that? Both make wishes on the same star?”

“I dunno. Maybe if we wish for the same thing? Guess we won’t find out unless it comes true.”

“Well, you’re the star expert. I believe you.”

“Not yet, I’m not.”

“You will be. I know you.”

Ruth only hums in response. Peri feels the vibration of the sound against her back and wings. A chill runs across her skin, making her feathers stand up briefly.

“You alright?” Ruth asks, running a gentle hand along her feathers once more.

“Mmmm.”

The stars are starting to fill all the gaps between the clouds now.

“Do you wanna go back in?” Ruth asks.

“Mm,” Peri says again. “Not yet. Can we stay just a little longer?”

“Yeah. I’d like that. Although my leg is kinda asleep.”

“Oh, gosh, I'm right on it, I’m sorry.”

“Ah, don’t worry. Maybe let’s move back so I can lean on the light, though?” Peri nods.

Ruth lets go of her and scoots the few feet back to the light at the center of the circular balcony. Peri’s heartache whines a little at the temporary loss, but she soothes it with a wordless whisper. She clambers after Ruth and leans against the light next to her, the intermittent brilliance shining through their feathers. She leans into the wing that Ruth spreads for her and the arm that Ruth wraps around her shoulders. She curls an arm around Ruth’s waist, weaving it under her beautiful barred and spotted feathers. The slow, regular creak of the light turning hums behind and below them. Its familiar gleam and grumble insulates them from the rest of the world. They’re cupped in their own little universe of light and sound, nothing but the sky and the sea and the shining.

The weight of Ruth’s head against her shoulder takes Peri by surprise. She hardly dares to glance at it, afraid she might move, but she dares just enough to allow herself a glimpse of Ruth’s dark hair only inches away. It’s really there. She’s really there.

Peri leans her head against Ruth’s, and her chest is a garden thinking of flowers. The two of them share a sigh and watch the stars and the swinging light in the darkness.


End file.
